


Nil Desperandum - Never Despair

by IFallLikeLeavesAndSnow



Category: Passengers (2016)
Genre: Also really frickin' nitpicky, And not the one's you think, But cathartic as hell, Fix-It, Gen, It could've been great, Let's Get Logical, My frustration over the plot holes and people complaining about it drives me to write this, Oh my lord this movie had problems, Really ranty everyone, not my best work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-10-26 17:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10791534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IFallLikeLeavesAndSnow/pseuds/IFallLikeLeavesAndSnow
Summary: A collection of snippets and AU's in which characters are analyzed, psychology is touched upon, and egregious plot holes are patched as we examine what could've been (it doesn't always end well). Not necessarily in that order.Because I. Will fix. This movie.





	1. Unintelligent Design

The starship Avalon was, without exaggeration, one of the greatest undertakings in human civilization at the time of its creation. So large was it that the ship itself could not be built on earth. Instead it was assembled piece by piece in low earth orbit, as part of a collaborative effort on the part of numerous companies coming together under the banner of Homestead. Being so great, it was of course incredibly expensive. With companies thinking in terms of multiple generations and long term PR, the only thing they could do was make sure that the ship was as safe as possible. Should anything have gone wrong, thousands of lives would've been lost, and the companies would've been utterly decimated.

The Avalon was a wonder of engineering and redundancy. The protective layer of metal that composed the outer layer of the ship was three times thicker than it needed to be. Each of the ships core systems existed in quadruplicate, and each of the copies were capable of assuming full control should the original be damaged. The ships primary nuclear fusion reactor, which was ensconced in a fivefold protective layer of carbon nanotube mesh surrounding an immensely durable core powered the entire thing. However each of its three siblings were equally capable of supplying the ship with all the power it could need. All the systems were decentralized, and so even if one group were to be utterly removed, the rest of the ship would be capable of running itself just fine.

The engineers, programmers and physicists that worked on it had accounted for every conceivable possibility, from gamma bursts, to asteroid fields, to meteor storms and beyond. What this boils down to is the fact that the Avalon was well prepared for the meteor storm it entered, and it emerged from it without a scratch. Even if a critical system had been destroyed, even if the main reactor were damaged, the overrides, redundancies and operating systems would’ve been fully capable of mitigating the damage. The fusion reactor would’ve shut down and vented by nature of the ship’s construction and by the nature of how fusion reactors function.  _Because fusion reactors would not just have a runaway reaction that threatened to destroy the entire ship because that's fucking dumb and not how fusion reactors would in all likelihood work_. But there was no damage, because none of the meteors made it past the first layer of protection. There was no slow degrading of the operating systems, no damage in need of fixing, no runaway reactor in need of venting.

And of course there were no passengers waking up before their time. When the Avalon approached its destination, the people were woken up on time and found that all was as it should have been. An engineer found himself living a new life, and an author found herself embarking on the first day of her year at Homestead II and never the two did meet.

-

Humanity is a paranoid lot. They take precaution after precaution, and even when they believe that there is nothing for them to worry about, they take yet still more precautions. So, despite their technology being “foolproof” they nevertheless installed redundancies into their stasis pods. The starship Avalon is an enormous beast of a ship, and so of course it would have the tools on hand necessary if something ever went wrong. So when Jim Preston went looking for help once he realized that he was awake far too early, he found it. A friendly android by the name of Larry was activated upon his searching for ways to get back to stasis and with his help Jim was soon thereafter placed back into stasis.

Meanwhile the ships other androids were busy repairing damage to the ship caused by the meteor storm because if you think that a ship that sophisticated lacks autonomous repair units you’re fucking crazy.

-

Aurora Lane, who had always thought her name sounded either like a Mary Sue or someone who belonged in a snarky action book, was not in the habit of drowning. She was a good swimmer, and had only gotten better with her months aboard the Avalon. So when the ships artificial gravity shut off _immediately_ after the rotational ring lost power and for some bizarre reason stopped instead of slowly bleeding off momentum due to the friction caused by its connection to the ship _like_ _it_ _should have_ , she did not nearly drown. For one thing, people fully submerged in water are already in an environment quite like zero gravity, and so she would’ve been able to swim out anyway as dictated by Newton’s Third Law, but for _another_ after months upon months of swimming and running, she actually had great lungs and stamina and didn’t fall unconscious after being under water for thirty seconds. Instead she escaped the floating pool of water and quickly decided that this ship just said fuck you to physics thank you very much.

 


	2. Reliable Redundancies Required

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long awaited second chapter. Don't worry I'm not done with this train wreck of wasted potential yet.

People are stupid. People are very  _very_ stupid. Not all the time, but enough, enough that humanity as a whole has rather gotten the idea into its head that when in doubt, always pack extras. When not in doubt, pack extras anyway. It is a simple, well understood fact that Murphy loves to not only dance upon foolish people's graves, but in fact arranges the horrifying car crash that puts them there in the first place. That is to say that the idea that anything that can go wrong will go wrong requires, by its nature, that people take precautions.

The notion that a ship the size of the Avalon would lack any sort of method to put someone back into stasis is utterly ridiculous. Perhaps if the ship was smaller it would be understandable. However given the size of the ship, the pools and tracks and gyms and storage areas and _vast expanses of empty space in said storage area_ , it is **utterly stupid and a sign of complete and undeniable mediocrity and inability to plan on even a rudimentary level that the ship would lack this incredibly crucial component.**

So of course there was, in fact, a way to get oneself back into stasis. In fact the idea that one would need special machines to place oneself back into storage is patently nonsensical, given that Jim Preston didn't expel anything, emerge from anything, or in fact _do_ anything but wake up. So his pod, which obviously contained numerous sensors and redundancies, detected the changes in his brainwaves and initiated the procedure to put him back into stasis. He was back to hibernating before he ever really woke up

-

People are, as stated, stupid. They take chances, make mistakes, and get messy, as a woman who would _shun_ the morons who apparently constructed the Avalon would say. That is not to say that mankind's adventurous tendencies are without merit. If the human species took no risks space travel wouldn't even be possible. However in the process of making these decisions, quite a few humans have been hurt. Many have suffered permanent injury and of course a countless number of us have _died_ in these pursuits. Whether the attempt was made because we were trying to learn something or it was simply one of humanities innumerable “hold my beer” moments, the fact is that accidents happen.

All of this is to say that injuries aboard the Avalon during the last few months of its travel (when the Passengers were _supposed_ to be awake) were utterly _inevitable_. The chances that no one would be hurt in any way during the time they spent on the ship, let alone injured in a manner that would require the use of a ludicrously advanced medical bay, is incredibly small. Given a population of roughly 5,000 over the period of a few months, the odds of more than one person being hurt in a significant way at the same time is _pretty_ _damn high_.

To put it simply then, the fact that there is only _one_ of the ludicrously advanced healing pod is **blood boiling** from a strictly logical point of view, **especially** considering that the pod is _not_ some perfect thing and by all rights should in _no way_ revived our protagonist. In point of fact, it clearly takes some degree of _time_ for the pod to work, and in some cases there simply _isn’t_ any. The lack of thought put into the preparation of one of the most _important parts of the ship_ is mindboggling. It nearly requires _active sabotage._ So of _course_ that didn't happen.

Instead when Jim Preston and Aurora Lane were granted ful access to the medical bay by a poor dead Laurence Fishburne, there were _plenty_ of jury-rigable pods in what would _have to be a spacious medical area instead of a fifty by fifty foot room with one fucking medical pod my **god!**_ They quickly figured out how to work the expensive machinery despite neither of them having _any_ history or medical technician knowledge but _whatever let’s just over look that_. The ship having been _saved_ (even if the notion of a ship this enormous and advanced suffering a critical melt down that could be _fixed_ by a writer and a basic mechanic is ridiculous) they quickly got into the magical space super fix-it pods _and went the fuck to sleep._

-

Jim Preston and Aurora Lane, two attractive people with about as much chemistry as Noble Gases, fell, if not in _Love_ , then in . . . cohabitativeness. Given the intensely dangerous nature of isolation, no matter how much of an introvert you may be, the two had to, over time, get along with one another. They had, quite simply, no one else to talk to. No matter how many movies and books you have to watch and read, social interaction as a fundamental _need_ of every human, on the planet or off.

Given enough time trapped inside, a feeling of claustrophobia is inevitable, no matter how large ones enclosure may be. To counter the rising urge they no doubt felt to murder one another or throw themselves out of the airlock, they decided to plant some trees . . . or something. Given the rate of growth on everything, the moss and plants, the fact that those would all require fairly constant water and fertilizer, given that the “ground” that the trees grew out of was composed of _maybe_ a few inches of dirt and therefore wouldn’t have _nearly_ enough nutrients, especially given the closed nature of the miniature ecosystem.

Also they defrosted some birds n’shit or _something_ , cause there were definitely some animals wandering about never mind questions on how those animals, you know, _survived_ without human intervention and aid given that there is _nothing for them to eat my **god put some thought into these things**_. The tree got improbably huge and ivy hung everywhere in the main lobby area, it was all very pretty and ~~unrealistic~~ magical and you would half expect the name of the ship to be revealed to be Eden in a stunning moment of tone deaf faux symbolism.

Having managed to trick their hindbrain’s into not realizing the nature of their inescapable prison by creating a more naturalistic environ, the two grow old and die in their little homemade house. Leaving a limited ecosystem to ~~apparently survive and thrive after they’re dead~~ die horribly because there was no one to care for it .

I’m sure there weren’t any massive consequences that arose from those events when everyone else woke up in 90 years.

Not. At. All.

Gah.


	3. I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are 5,257 other people on the Avalon, 5,257 other people within a few cubic miles of him. 
> 
> He has never been more alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note that this is NOT a happy or humorous chapter like my previous ones. Proceed with caution. 
> 
> P.S. I did this at like midnight on my phone so if there are any issues let me know and I'll fix it asap.

The Avalon is unspeakably quiet. There is of course the faint background hum of the ship itself, of the cleaning bots as they devour whatever microscopic bits of dust they can find. 

But there are no natural sounds. There are no echoes, no subconsciously heard noises. No animals, no footsteps, no distant words. There is never anything at all but the sound of Jims feet and his own voice, bouncing back at him. 

He stopped wearing clothes awhile ago. There is no one and nothing to see him. He'd love it if there were, if someone could see and speak to him. Arthur is all he has, a friendly face but there's no soul behind him. He retains information, but he doesn't  _learn_. 

Jim Preston is a man alone, and he is slowly but surely dying. His days pass in a muddled haze, every thought by turns weighed and bouyed by the alcohol in his system.

 _Space_ he thinks,  _is beautiful_. When he floats out into the void he feels almost free. Free to drift  _drift_ away. He's close, so close to the end of his pain.

The tug of his chord snaps him back to his personal hell of a reality.

There is nothing left for him. No point in doing anything. Even if he lives a healthy life, exercises and eats right he'll die years before anyone wakes up.

The cheerful voice telling him to have a safe trip is horrifying and welcoming all at once, just like that little red button. He wants nothing more than to press it. To end the loneliness. 

And yet he can't bring himself to do it. The voice in his head telling him to press it wars against the other voice, the primal  **scream**  that tells him to preserve himself, and it loses.

He flees in terror and cries under the unchanging lights and wishes to die and live all at once.

* * *

 

Aurora Lane won't leave his head. He's looked over the files and faces of dozens of other passengers, watched their logs, read about their lives. He's done it all for the sake of not doing the thing he's both terrified of and desires most of all. He thinks perhaps if he can bury her under a deluge of other names and faces and stories he'll forget about the writer. 

He cannot.

He learns much about the other passengers, finds people that might've been his friends and colleagues. But he cannot forget Aurora Lane. The writer is brilliant. She's deep and moving, humorous and insightful. He watches her videologs again and again and again. He falls for her a little bit more each time. He grows to feel that he knows her,  _truely_ deeply knows her. 

He can't help but wonder how she'd feel about him. Would she like him? He knows she would, he'd do anything to please her, to make her happy. She'd be  _so_ happy with him.

She left everything behind, he knows, they all did. And really what does Homestead II offer her? They can't even make a pod right! It'll be awful for her, he knows it, he  **knows it**. He would treat her better than anyone else there. He'd be kind and gentle and loving and fun. He'd make her happy. He  **will** make her happy.

What he does, when he finally gives in, he does out of love.

And so begins the nightmare.

* * *

 Aurora despirs at first, like he did. She cries and she smashes things and she breaks the walls until they can't be broken anymore. She hammers and saws and blow torches the doors. She does things he hadn't thought of during his year alone. She's brilliant Aurora is, clever and creative and sharp. It's one of the things he loves most about her.

She fails nonetheless.

He helps her when he can, even though it's futile. He grabs another hammer and they swing and swing and swing for hours. It's a good bonding exercise, because while he knows her-

(And oh he knows everything,  _ **everything**_ about his Aurora)

\- She doesn't know him very well at all. So in between grunts and the dull thuds of their hammers he tells her about himself, and he listens rapturously as she tells him all the things he already knows about her and  **then some!** He gets to learn more about his lovely Aurora and he couldn't be happier.

She cries and gives up every other day but she gets back to it soon after. So tenacious his Aurora. 

He feeds her delusion of a solution for a while and holds her when she finally gives up and he does it all out of love.

* * *

 

Arthur ruins everything and he almost smashes the worthless sniveling pathetic pile of subhuman garbage into pieces. But if he did that Aurora might be upset, and he doesn't want to make her any more sad than she already is. She won't look at him anymore, can't stand to be around him. He watches her with the cameras and puts little gifts in her room and sings to her over the comms but she just looks more and more frightened. He knows she'll come around eventually. In the meantime he reboots Arthur and makes sure to never tell the android anything important ever again.

Aurora cries when Arthur doesn't recognize her, and Jim is there to comfort her. She pushes him, screams at him, hits him. He misses her touch. He bleeds and he enjoys it because he loves her.

* * *

Gus doesn't like him but Jim doesn't care. He doesn't really care about the ship breaking down either, except that it worries Aurora. On the otherhand she's talking to him again, and that makes him overjoyed.

Gus dies but their problems aren't solved. He does the best he can, but in the end he's given his wish from so long ago. He drifts free, so free, into the blackness with a cracked helmet. He wishes Aurora was with him.

* * *

 

Aurora wanders a ship that is full of life and is as silent as the grave. She gets very good at facing down the computer. She dances and she sings and she boxes and runs and swims. She watches old movies and tv shows, she devours book after book. She does anything and everything to stave off the inescapable truth. She is alone. It's during a walk through the pod room that she catches sight of a man. His face is unlined, his hair is bright blond and long. His name is Chris Harper and he's apparently one of the few who came on this trip for the sheer thrill of it. He's like her and his face wont leave her alone.

* * *

 

Eventually, she opens his file. She learns about his job, watches as he shyly goes through his interviews. She likes him, he's funny but not in a loud way. He's quiet and kind and without noticing it she learns all she can about him.

Her technical skills have never been great, but she has plenty of time to learn. She tells herself she's taking precautions, in the event that something else goes cataclysmically wrong. She's doing it for her fellow passengers, the lucky ones who are safely cradled in their oh so infallible pods. 

She tries not to think about the fact that her first area of study is the pods themselves

* * *

 

She wanders aimlessly, eating whenever she feels the need. She makes a promise to herself, and the first time she thinks of breaking it, she locks herself in the airlock until she talks herself down.

She learns about other people, tries to leave Chris behind, forget him, if only so she can rediscover him one day. She thinks she and Brenda would be great friends, and Charlie would've been perfect for her brother. She cries for Devons parents and screams at Taylor's unwavering face. 

She smashes Jims pod with the hammer that did nothing for weeks and she expects victory but all she feels is failure. Her food is bland and flavorless. She loses the energy to do anything but flick through names. Everyday, she ends on Chris. Somedays she starts on him too. She can't help but feel a bond with this man. Their lives were quite different but in a way quite similar. They were both trying to find something in the stars, on another world in another time. She falls asleep one night, a bottle spilled on the floor, leaning against his pod.

I _t'd be different_ she thinks _between me and Chris. It'd be_ ** _better._  **She can't exactly fix the ship by herself if something else goes wrong. Why it took three people last time and they barely succeeded! And what if something happens to her and another disaster befalls the sleeping ship?

 _It's best for everyone_ , she comes to think.

It takes Aurora Lane one year, two months, one week and four days to wake up Chris Harper.

She does it out of love, not just for him, but for all those other people who need a guardian.

The nightmare begins anew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, to keep this short because I'm doing this in my phone, let's get started. Firstly, I just rewatched Passengers for the first time since starting this fic. My bad, but no one cares about that. Let's get into the nitty gritty justifications. Disclaimer: I am not a professional.
> 
> Human beings are, and I say this in utter seriousness, incapable of living in isolation. We are social creatures, and we REQUIRE socialization to live. Yes there are hermits and the like, but even THEY don't live in TRUE isolation, not for any extended period of time. There is always someone or something, even if it is in fact simply an animal. Those who try are doomed to fail. Your brain will literally begin to cannibalize itself.
> 
> Moving along, Jim Preston does something which is objectively wrong in the film, of course. However I will hold that the only possible outcomes assuming that hibernation is not possible (as Passengers proves via ridiculous railroading) is that you will A.) Kill yourself B.) Go entirely insane or C.) Wake someone else up. There is no outcome of a long healthy life in this scenario. He nearly did the first, but his survival instincts would not allow that. Being driven to suicide via isolation is far from rare (It's why extended solitary confinement in prisons was illegal until recently) but the innate desire of all living beings: to perpetuate ones existence, is also incredibly strong (The drive to propagate oneself is our most primal and powerful instinct).
> 
> Jim waking Aurora up is commonly viewed as "He did it cause he was lonely and horny and she was pretty." Whilst I don't deny any of those as being true, it isn't honest to simply cut it off there. Firstly lonely doesn't begin to cover it. I'll say it again. You WILL die if you are put in a situation like this. Skipping the latter two for a moment, it isn't just Auroras face he's interested in, he got to "know" her over the course of months. To cut a very long and interesting story short, people develop what are known as parasocial relationships with internet personalities. It's the feeling of truly knowing and clicking with someone, and having a very invested and intense relationship with them . . . Even though they don't know you exist. It's entirely one sided. As an example (insert youtuber and their fans here). Oh boy this is getting long. And finally there is the horny Jim pretty Aurora thing. Which IS a thing. I'm not saying it's not. It's not a justification but it IS a reason. I feel like people lose sight of the fact that we ARE animals, and any animal will pursue a mate with the greatest level of attractive features and the highest chance to reproduce. And stuff. I'm way too tired to get into evolutionary psychology right now. Human's are just capable of a bit more discernment than the rest.
> 
> Given how people would likely act in this scenario I gave him a bit of options B and C and okay I am tired and going to bed now.
> 
> TL;DR: Jim went cray cray m'kay kay? Because human's weren't built to survive lonely space ships.
> 
> Hopefully next time this'll be more cheerful and humorous. Then again perhaps not.

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so, I'll add more to this later, but this is all the rant I have at the moment. I'll need to go back and re-watch the movie, which yes, will be an immense hardship, because there are SO MANY PLOT HOLES AND THINGS THAT MAKE NO SENSE. Honestly this movie is saved only by the fact that it has a cool concept, decent visuals, and Chris Pratts ass.


End file.
